Advanced PDF customization

Advanced PDF Templates are used for creating complex business documents for printed and emailed transaction Advanced PDF customization helps this process. NetSuite provides support for various types of business documents and also provide standard forms for each. It is an alternate method for customizing printed transactions.

If a business needs an advanced customized printed transaction, then they can make use of this advanced NetSuite PDF customization feature. It also supports internationalized versions of layouts. Suitescript functionalities can be applied to produce advanced HTML/PDF printed forms.

In NetSuite, some predefined setup should be done before advanced PDF/HTML customization. To make more complicated business documents, NetSuite provides a powerful tool which is known as the Advanced PDF templating tool.

Requirement

Advanced PDF customization was our client requirement and we need to customize a standard PDF template for achieving complex client requirements. We got different requirements from the client about advanced PDF customization. The client provides their model templates. The major of them include customization of invoice templates, the addition of some extra fields which may not present in the standard form, change in the layout forms, to remove some fields and any other layouts.

Some of our clients required us to group the items according to certain conditions. Even more, needed page break according to their conditions. Another interesting requirement was that of taking the data from custom fields of different records.

Challenges of Advanced PDF Customization

While doing this customization, our team faced some difficulties. Unfortunately, not all the fields in the records can access sometimes. However, all the fields which are specified in the Standard PDF/HTML Template can access by applying free-marker logic.

Free marker languages are simple and specialized though not fully programming language. It displays the required data using templates. Another challenge what we have faced is that the developer should have the basic knowledge about CSS or HTML. NetSuite does not provide any training about these languages. They cannot perform any modification in markup source directly unless one has sufficient knowledge of CSS/HTML.

Our solution for Advanced PDF Customization

We can take the standard PDF template as our base and can build our required template on this.

Sometimes custom fields cannot access directly from the record so we go for a saved search to get the required fields in our template. We can also perform basic arithmetic operations in PDF for calculation. Additionally, we can manually edit the source code advanced template by toggling the source code. In the end, the user should also have the HTML knowledge.

For the implementation, our team takes reference from Netsuite Record Browser to find the field ids and Sublist field ids. Freemarker is a robust tool to develop advanced PDF/ HTML templates.

Results

Advanced PDF Templates supports excess customization capabilities than any other transaction layouts. Using Netsuite Advanced PDF customization we can customize the appearance of any printed transactions according to the client’s requirements. Instead of scripting overheads, Netsuite PDF customization uses to prepare transaction layouts.

Our adroit professional team achieved the goals required to meet specific client expectation and needs. The results include;

Adding additional fields

Layout change

Remove fields

Remove layouts.

Creating invoice templates.

Grouping the items

Page break

Take data from custom fields of records.

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